Additional InformationDelta Green -- a Call of Cthulhu game sourcebook from Pagan
Publishing -- is role-playing in a conspiracy milieu.
The mission is a daunting one. Fortunately there are those who have gone before. They
have provided 90s investigator characters with valuable new spells, skills, and
weapons. Thanks to them we can now use Uzis and 9 mm Glocks against the
Fungi from Yuggoth and the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath.
The authors of the source book (Dennis Detwiller,
Adam Scott Glancy, John Tynes) have done extensive research into the Byzantine layers
of red tape and bureaucracy that clog up the United States government to get to the
truth.

The following is a transcript of an e-mail received from somewhere... out
there:

To Games player from Review Master -- greetings -- your mission should you
choose to accept it (and if you don't I'll come to your house, strap you to a cane
chair, and tickle your feet with a long feather) is too pick up a copy of
Delta Green -- a Call of Cthulhu game sourcebook from Pagan
Publishing -- and begin role-playing in a conspiracy milieu.

This mammoth work takes the player out of the 1920s horror and sets them in the
X-Files world of today. Characters are no longer lone individuals battling
a unknown superior horror. They work for the government. Characters are part of an
outlawed secret organization within the US government called Delta Green, and are
dedicated to gathering information on UFOs and other mythos-related events.

It's also two books in one: a great extension of the Call of Cthulhu
role-playing game, and a easy-to-figure-out background to US law enforcement. Anyone
who ever needed to know what the US Marshals' jurisdiction is, Delta Green
is for you. It gives information on the structure and history of every branch of the
US government concerned with law enforcement. And I mean every branch! Central
Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Marshals, National Security
Council, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, US Secret Service, Defense
Intelligence Agency, Defense Investigative Service, Air Force Intelligence & Air Force
Office of Special Investigations -- and that ain't even a tenth of the list. It even
includes the National Park Service (I guess just in case Nyarlathotep vacations in
Yosemite.) And if you can't find what you're looking for there, check out the annotated
bibliography. A brilliant place to start research on any of the
aforementioned government branches.

Included also are several beginning adventure scenarios, a guide to modern firearms
around the world, descriptions and the complete text of four mythos manuscripts,
hundreds of sample characters and NPCs, and the histories and descriptions of
anti-Delta Green forces. (You want a Cigar-Smoking Man in your campaign? Look
for him here.)

This source book is stuffed. You couldn't put another thing in
here. It's conspiracy/suspense role-playing at it's best. Go and buy 12 copies
and hand them out in the street. Highly recommended. Five thumbs up.

But it ain't horror.

It's as much horror as the X-Files is horror. Let me explain.

At its core horror needs the Abyss. One of the reasons Lovecraft's stories work so
well is that the more protagonists pry back the superficial veil of reality, the more
they find things are not what they seem. True enough for conspiracy, but horror goes
further, touches us deeper. It tells us there is nothing we can do about it, there is
no hope, no God or Buddha or Mohammed to redeem us, there is only the Abyss into which
we all fall eventually, lost forever and ever, amen. It shatters the ground beneath
our feet, the anchor we cling to day to day.

What makes those Lovecraftian
protagonists truly heroic is they stick out their academic chins and keep going. They
say "To heck with it, I must know the truth." They have the courage to stare down
into the Abyss. And they go insane. But put a .357 into a character's hand along with
a badge and a cell phone and it gives them hope. Not horror.

There is an underlying assumption to all conspiracy/suspense: if you dig deep enough
you will find the truth and if enough people believe with you, you will be able to effect change.

With Great Cthulhu there is no hope. The outcome is still the same. Lonely death. The
truth doesn't make you paranoid. You should already be paranoid!
It makes you more despondent, and maybe a tad insane. In fact Delta Green for the
most part ignores H.P. Lovecraft's brilliant and disturbing mythos.
The only real mythos creatures represented are the Mi-Go and they are transformed
into explainable-by-the-scientific-model aliens. All other races or entities are
'reclusive' or 'rarely encountered.'

The truth is out there... and like everything, it's a little more complicated than it seems at first.